Happy Wars Review, 7.1 out of 10 based on 10 ratings
Yoichi Take, the president of the developer Toylogic, has made the prediction that “moving forward, even triple-A titles will be shifting toward Play-for-Free.” Considering that these are exactly the kind of games his company develops, that is hardly a bold prediction against his own self-interest, but regardless, there is always every chance that he is right. However, judging solely on the basis of his company’s latest title Happy Wars, which is being touted (somewhat incorrectly) as Xbox Live’s first free-to-play title, you would be hard pressed to find any merit in the idea. That is because Happy Wars is an overall terrible game and the only thing it will likely be remembered for, if it is remembered at all, is going first. It certainly will not be for gameplay, production values, or online functionality, all of which range anywhere from mediocre at best to outright infuriatingly awful at worst.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that Happy Wars is only technically a free-to-play game under the loosest of definitions. That is because in order to actually play the game, one needs to have access to a Gold level Xbox Live membership and that requires a monthly fee of varying amounts. Which in turns means from a (admittedly somewhat pedantic) certain point of view Happy Wars is in fact not a wholly free-to-play affair. If that were the worst problem infecting this game then it would hardly rankle on its own. No, the real overarching problem that taints most of Happy Wars on just about every level can be summed up in a single word: sloppiness.

It begins with perhaps the most basic part of the title: its gameplay. At its core, Happy Wars is third-person, multiplayer-driven action game that features two armies of up to fifteen each battling it out for domination and all wrapped in a nominally ‘adorable’ package. Think Fat Princess only less complex or clever; which is really saying something when one stops to think about it. The game offers players three classes to pick from (Warrior, Cleric, and Mage) and they break down more or less as one would expect. All classes have a basic attack and three sets of skills: two personal and one team. Personal skills vary across classes; with Warriors getting mostly physical attacks, Clerics focusing on healing and other defensive magic, and Mages getting access to lots of pyrotechnics and buffs. Team skills meanwhile require initial casting by a player of the appropriate class but then players of any skill can join in the various required formations needed to actually activate the attack. Team skills can range from troop charges that massively boost defense to a towering & devastating tornado that destroys all enemies in its path to changing all enemies in the immediate vicinity to 1-hp flowers while simultaneously resurrecting all fallen allies.

The main goal of a battle is breach the enemy castle and destroy their totem pole-like tower.

In theory, each class has a wide variety of useful skills that backs up their intended play styles, but several problems mar this setup in practice. For one thing, skills are often difficult to deploy properly thanks to awkward camera placement and ill conceived controls. So, for example, the Cleric’s basic healing spell is often tricky to employ quickly enough to be useful because it requires players to specifically choose a target for the spell. Except that by its very design Happy Wars is a fast paced arcade-style title and this combined with camera and visual design problems I will address later makes such specific targeting often all but impossible. The same could be said for the Warrior’s spin attack (which causes the player to have to fight for control of the character in use and thus blunts its effectiveness) or rocketman attack (which generally requires a level of exacting and precise aim to be of any that is just not often practical in Happy Wars moment to moment gameplay). Only the Mage seems to suffer little from this problem, thanks to attacks that either home in on foes or are general area-of-effect attacks. Of course this fact also incidentally can make the class often seem overpowered especially in the hands of experienced or even decently skilled players so there is that. Happy Wars is meant by specific design to be a quick and simple-to-play game so the decision to not offer a majority of skills for player use that are themselves also simple and easy to use is simply outright bad game design.

Of course even if the players should find skills they are proficient with, the game still has ways to help ensures it screws them over in regards to skills. That is because, in a remarkably short-sighted design decision, players start each game with randomly assigned skills for each class. So players who were hoping they could experiment and come up with consistent strategies for succeeding at the game are out of luck. Not to mention that there is no question that in general terms, some skills are unquestionably more useful than others.

Team skills are overwhelmingly powerful but require patience and coordination at odds with Happy Wars’ general design.

This already inexplicable of enough of a design choice only gets even worse when Happy Wars‘ leveling system (which allows players to increase their level to a maximum of five over the course of game by killing enemies or other actions) is taken into account. That is because the more powerful and useful skills for each class generally only become available upon leveling up. On the surface it is perfectly reasonable idea, but where things start to fall apart is that players cannot see which specific high level skills they have been assigned that game until they have actually reached the level where the skills are usable. Naturally enough, this in turn makes developing long term strategies all the more difficult for players. I just cannot stress how awful of a design decision I find Happy Wars‘ approach to randomly assigning skills; it seems to defeat the whole purpose of having distinct skills and pickable classes in the first place. And even leaving skills aside, hit detection and camera can often make even basic attacks easy to miss with so even just on the level of mindless brawler this game fails. I am all for making a game that is simple-to-play yet difficult-to-master but Happy Wars completely misses the mark on this account and instead what players are left with is a messy and often not very tasty stew of a game instead.

Further compounding these problems are the characters designs and camera placement employed by Happy Wars. Starting with the latter, players have exactly two camera views they can choose from: one close-up from behind and one that is clearly in theory meant to be a birds-eye view of the battlefield but in practice only increases the overall view somewhat. These views work well on smaller and more straightforward stages, but when it comes to the game’s various larger and/or multilevel stages things start to get messy. And then there are the character and armor designs that in general make it incredibly easy for an individual character, even the one the player is currently themselves controlling, to get lost in the crowd of similar looking figures. Since this game is supposed to be all about assembling in a large crowd before assaulting the enemy en masse, the negative impact this particular problem can have on the game is significant. Ultimately, Happy Wars manages the impressive trick of being too simple to appeal to anyone looking for a game with the slightest real strategic potential while also being just complex enough to be ineffective as a mindless brawler. It is that perfect sweet spot of mediocre that means the game does not even have value as a so-bad-its-good title; Happy Wars’ gameplay is just far too boring for the title to be worth investing in.

Think that all these characters blend together visually? Welcome to Happy Wars.

Other problems abound as well. As would be expected from a free-to-play game, Happy Wars includes a cash shop where players can purchase a variety of gameplay enhancements. Except that in addition to cosmetic items, there are also weapons, armor pieces, and full sets that can lead to those who purchase them completely overpowered, especially at the lower levels of play. So, in other words, it is one of THOSE free-to-play games where the people who are prepared to spend the real money can also buy themselves a real advantage if not outright victory. Even better is the fact that players can also spend real money to respawn in battle with a number of useful buffs and enhancements. To be fair, these buffs have a time limit and can also be purchased using the in-game currency but the high price of doing so (with in-game currency, the price is far, far lower for those who use the real cash option of course) versus the need to buy new equipment (randomly generated only of course, would not want take away from that cash shop after all) makes this a highly unwise investment at best. Combine this with the fact that rank determines the full set of equipment options available for a player and that at a certain level in multiplayer, losing actually causes this rank to decrease, the setup for a really nasty situation is present and well accounted for.

Speaking of multiplayer, Happy Wars has to have one of the single most horrible examples of matchmaking I have encountered in any game, on any system. On average it took me between three and five tries per actual game played, with the game kicking me out of a current lobby because of not being able to find enough players on both sides to start the match. Except that from what I can tell the problem is not a lack people playing (at least not yet; give it time though) but a flaw in the matchmaking software itself. And keep in mind that it can take between two to three minutes per try, so the wasted time really starts to add up. Considering that not only is multiplayer the main point of this game but that it is also the only way to unlock single player content (an approach in and of itself that seems particularly backwards), this failure is simply inexcusable. Even when players do manage to make it into a game, the matchmaking does nothing to ensure the numbers on both sides are even or that player levels are all within a similar range. It is not uncommon for one side to consist entirely of level one to three players while the other has two, three, or even more players whose levels rank in the double digits.

HW’s single player actually has decent variety & unique enemy types. Too bad locking it behind forty hours or more of multiplayer strips it of real value.

Also, keep in mind that depending on the match and people involved, it can be ridiculously simple to win in under 30 seconds, especially when one side has even five or six players who know what they are doing. I can state this occurrence is more than possible with authority since that is exactly what happened to me six times and each time with a completely different set of players on both sides to boot. And while I love an easy victory in theory as much as the next player, the idea of waiting at times twenty to thirty minutes for a match only to have said match then end so quickly… Well it is less than satisfactory to say the very least. Basically, even in a game with as many flaws and bad design choices like Happy Wars, the simply dreadful state of matchmaking the game currently employs stands out. Oh and for the record? Playing a game only with friends & invited players does not allow you to build up your multiplayer rank. So if you want to be able to really get anywhere in the game and unlock the majority of content and/or best stuff for use, enjoy dealing with the matchmaking.

Rounding things out are Happy Wars‘ production values which range anywhere from simply bad to downright maddening. Visually, picture LittleBigPlanet only without the charm or ability to create visuals that don’t leave players with a vague desire to throw up upon viewing them. The game is clearly going for cute and god only know I like cute when it is well-executed (see my love of Friendship is Magic) but this feels like it is trying way too hard only to completely miss the mark. Visual elements are just sloppily thrown together like the fact that sometimes armor will take the form of over-sized milk cartons or thimbles except that nothing else in the game suggests a world à la Stacking, consisting of up everyday objects made large. Then there is the audio. Oh, the audio… Picture this: a game featuring up to thirty players at a time all who possess voices taken straight from Alvin and the Chipmunks. If that sounds like anyone’s idea of good time they are welcome to it, but personally I had to play the game with the sound turned all the way down or else risk the overwhelming desire to poke my own eardrums out with scissors. It all goes back to the idea that the game is trying to be cute but clearly has no idea how to actually go about it.

This is the best stage in the game because its small, features a straightforward layout, and is visually distinct from the characters.

To some degree all of the previous production value complaints were a case of personal preference; what is not however is the semi-frequent slowdown I encountered in matches with a full set of fifteen players on each side. Keep in mind that I have played over a hundred rounds of online co-op and/or versus mode in Code of Princess in the last week and never once encountered a drop of slowdown and that was a 3DS game. With a game as simple looking as Happy Wars and on a system not only as powerful as, but as optimized for online play as the Xbox 360, there is no excuse for slowdown. Then again, as I keep harping on, everything else about this game is remarkably sloppy so I suppose the production values would hardly be an exception either.

I get it: Happy Wars is a free-to-play game and holding it to the same level as a full-fledged sixty dollar retail release is perhaps being unfair. Perhaps. Yet even by the lower set of standards I used to judge this game, Happy Wars still fails to measure up. This is a fact made all the more true upon comparison to the Xbox 360’s direct competition in the console market, the PS3. Sony already has Free Realms AND DCU Online as examples of free-to-play games and even at their worse, both of these games are leaps and bounds beyond Happy Wars in terms of quality on every level. Then again if it comes to that, there are free-to-play Home games that are more enjoyable overall experiences than Happy Ways. And that is not even taking into account future titles headed to the system like Dust 514.

Unlike this mess of a stage which is just a pain to play on.

For that matter, I am willing to wager that anyone who owns a Xbox 360 also stands a far better than average chance of also owning a computer that is capable of playing at least a dozen professionally released free-to-play games that are a hundred times better than Happy Wars. In essence, the only reason to even remotely consider wasting time on Happy Wars is if the Xbox 360 is literally the absolute only gaming platform available to someone. And even then this hypothetical person is still probably better off not bothering in the first place. Even at a price tag of free, Happy Wars is still a game that is horribly overpriced. Money is one thing, but it is the time that a player would end up spending on this waste of digital space that is the real problem. After all, time is one currency that can never be refunded and there are so many better ways to spend it on than such a poorly slapped together and crapped out the door game like this one.

A review code for this game was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review. The reviewer spent approximately fifteen hours playing the game.

Also, feel free to follow the reviewer on Twitter @bigred_13 please if you feel so inclined.